California Biographies
Transcribed by Peggy Hooper
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
Source:
History of the state of California and biographical record of the San Joaquin
Valley, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from
its earliest settlement to the present time.
Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M.
The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905
Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176
CHARLES SPENKER. Among the younger generation of grain raisers of Stanislaus
county none holds out greater promise of continued success than Charles Spenker. now the
manager and lessee of five thousand acres of land near Oakdale. Mr. Spenker has known
no other home than the county in which he lives, and in which he was born September 20,
1875. As his name indicates he is of German ancestry, and his parents, Joseph and Julia
(Stelling) Spenker, were born and reared in the Fatherland. The father came to America
as a single man in 1864. and the mother came with her uncle in 1872, meeting and marrying
in California after Joseph Spenker had made a start in life. Mr. Spenker was sixteen years old
when he arrived in the state with his paternal uncle, Fred Spenker, having journeyed by way of
Panama, and settled near Stockton. In 1868 they moved to eighty acres of land upon a por-
tion of which Modesto has since been built. Mr. Spenker entering this in his own name, at the
time little thinking that residences and institutions and the hum of general industry would
some time be heard on his land. Still regarding his possession as nothing out of the ordinary,
he traded his farm for his present place in 1882, and now owns nine hundred and sixty
acres, of which four hundred are in the river bottom. He has a rich and productive property, and
is one of the representative men of his section, having reared a large family of children and taken
part in the general affairs of the community. In the order of their birth his children are: Mrs.
Ida Reinhart, Charles, Millie, Joseph, Nellie, Harry (deceased), Leonard and Donald.
As a youth, Charles Spenker attended the public schools of Stanislaus county, and took
readily to farming, profiting by the careful agricultural training of his able father. At the
age of twenty-one he started out on his own responsibility, and when twenty-five rented
nine hundred and sixty acres of land, which he devoted to grain, and two years later, in 1902,
rented the Leach ranch for five years. At present he is farming five thousand acres of land,
all in Stanislaus county, and is making a special study of grain, upon which he has become an
authority. He is a careful and painstaking farmer, methodical in his habits, and progressive
in his methods. He has an incentive to labor in a helpful and sympathetic wife, who was for-
merly Freda Cook, a native of Germany, and daughter of Nicholas Cook, a pioneer of Stanis-
laus county. Mr. Spenker is a Democrat in politics, and fraternally is connected with the
Woodmen of the World. He has the typical German's thrift and enterprise, and also his
large heartedness and hospitality, and among his neighbors and friends is noted for his honorable
and upright dealings.